The American Spectator

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Mormons in America

11.2.07 @ 12:02AM

(Page 2 of 6)

Of Chesser's many injudicious arguments, I find this one to be the biggest whopper: "But for the most part Christians believe that Mormon theology leads its adherents to an eternal separation from the Lord." Chesser has taken the simple term "Christian" meaning a person who believe in Jesus Christ, and elevated it to the same intolerable level as that espoused by the Westboro Baptist Church who picket military funerals.

Who appointed Walker or for that matter, Chesser, as arbiters of who is and isn't a Christian? If I want to know more about New Age-ism, Scientology or the Mormons, I certainly wouldn't start with a visit to Walker's website or believe anything in Chesser's column.
-- Paul Lindberg
American Fork, Utah

President Bush is a Methodist. Methodists send missionaries all over the globe. Methodist membership has steadily declined during Bush's presidency.

Prejudiced for Eternity? Are you projecting?
-- Mark Tarnowski
Methodist

First, Mr. Paul Chesser, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not need to have a President of the United States to achieve "instant credibility." Second, how has Presidents Bush's evangelical religion helped in the missionary efforts of his church? A poor president probably leads for poor missionary recruitment, so is the fear really of a Mormon in the office or is it a fear of an effective Mormon in the office? And if you are afraid of Mr. Romney being a good president is that the same as being ashamed of the poor performance of the Evangelical currently in office? As for the Eternities I would fear more about putting an atheist into the highest office who continues the assault on the family, and who will place more liberals on the high court than Gods wrath over a Mormon in the office.
-- Todd Gray

If you follow the logic Mr. Chesser relays to us from dogmatic anti-Mormon Christians, then no true Christian should ever vote for anyone of no faith or any other faith. That means no Jews, no Moslems, no Hindus, no Buddhists, no Atheists, no Agnostics, no Deists, in short, no nothing unless the candidate avows an approved Christian religion. It wasn't that long ago that that type of bigoted thinking included Catholics. And as much as Protestants keep having internal struggles and splitting up to form new churches, if you follow that despicable logic to its bitter end, then nobody will be acceptable unless they are from your own particular Christian Sect.

Frankly, we Mormons believe in the Christ as depicted in the bible, but not the different being as set forth by those who would toady to the emperor Constantine hundreds of years after Jesus lived, died, was resurrected, and was written about in the scriptures we all call the bible. As much as all Christians, we believe we can only be saved through exercising faith in Christ. Yes there are some differences, but we don't believe that additional and continuing revelation from God contradicts biblical revelation and witness of God in any way. While we do have a similar arrogance in believing that we are right, (don't we all), we have given up the tactic of accusing everyone else as wrong for the more fruitful tactic of admitting we all have some truth, and wanting to add to that by sharing more truth.

If you follow the arguments Hewitt puts forth, you will realize that there is a much bigger downside possible to Mormons, when one of us chooses to run for President than there is an upside. Any Republican candidate will be demonized. Any candidate of faith will be demonized. As long as we stick together, nothing bad will happen. But if Bush's example is followed for a Mormon President, Mormon popularity will fall because of the behavior of a Mormon in the White House. But Hewitt argues further that once anti-Mormons amongst the faithful Right join with the secular Left in demonizing one of the faithful Right's own adherents, that we will have participated in making this demonization of the faithful acceptable across the board. And the broader Christianity, which has long been in the cross-hairs of the secular left, will finally fall victim to their attacks. In short, Christianity will suffer from it own partisanship, a truly bitter end for such despicable logic.

I frankly would rather Romney hadn't chosen to run because I don't want to suffer this demonization. But his running has made me realize that the religious faithful still hold onto bigotry. I hope I am wrong, but I doubt that if Romney wins the nomination that the volunteers, whose efforts put Bush over the top, will show up, and that that bigotry would then be responsible for another 8 miserable years of Clintons. Which is really worse, a couple of extra Mormon converts, or a lot more youngsters being taught to have sex before marriage, and following the public example of the rationalization that a Lewinsky isn't sex? And that is just a small taste of the anti-Christian influences of the first 8 years of Clinton.

Seriously, Romney winning or losing isn't going to make a difference to the number of young Mormon adults giving up part of their life to help others through sharing their faith, and I doubt that Romney's winning will make a significant positive difference in the number of people who convert. On the other hand, 8 more years of Clinton will make the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (our real name) look like a great refuge for those who want to protect their families. As important as sharing the Gospel is, I would rather protect the country from such harm than try to gain from such means.

Does it ever bother anyone else that you can make a living in the Christian community by choosing to be an Anti-"fill in the blank" expert? The one Mr. Chesser tells us about appears more concerned with hurting the faith he deserted than he does in witnessing for the faith he joined. That definitely biases him to not properly think through the consequences of his actions. Even if he is right, his actions may be part cause of a lot more damage to Christian families than he is trying to prevent.

In the winter of '83-'84 as I was serving the people of Vienna Austria as a Mormon Missionary, I had the opportunity to listen to some young Iranian activists spout similar false logic, but they carried it to a much more drastic conclusion. Basically, they said if your faith is right, then you have a responsibility to prevent others from following false faiths. But, they concluded this justified their use of force to convert others, and to guarantee that the converted won't sin. That is not the thinking of a loving, merciful or even just, God. Right ends never justify Wrong means. And God values our freedom to choose so much, that he permits bad choices. Yes, choices, whether bad or good, will have both temporal consequences and eternal consequences, bad for bad and good for good. And paraphrasing Paul, all of us will make bad choices sometime, thus we all need to exercise faith in the redemptive powers of Christ's Atonement. But becoming a disciple of Christ means trying to become like Christ and sharing his Gospel with Christian behaviors such as love, mercy and justness.

The world would become a better place, if we all focused on living and sharing our faiths with love instead of attacking each other's faith. And if some of us are so dreadfully wrong as Mr. Walker thinks, may God be loving, merciful and just.
-- James Bailey
P.S. If God were to turn out to be the evil God described to me so long ago, I would choose to oppose Him. Righteousness and goodness would demand it even against an all-powerful and vindictive evil. But I am sure that there is a God, and that he is the source of all goodness and righteousness. And thinking of those student activists whose faith was so distorted as to justify evil brings me sadness on their behalf, and regret that my witness was not heeded.

There were a couple of very telling comments in this article.

First, "But for the most part Christians believe that Mormon theology leads its adherents to an eternal separation from the Lord."

Letter to the Editor

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